Not to mention-- MP3 is a lossy algorithm for music storage.  Even at 256K
you are losing bits of musical data-- degrading the audio quality-- of
anything you encode to MP3.  My wife just got me an Archos (I guess think of
it as a Windows version of an iPod with a camera) and I'm thinking of it in
terms of travel and portability.  The digital era has degraded sonic quality
enough without me adding to my own woes.

I know I've mentioned this before, but in my other life I trade Allman
Brothers, Grateful Dead, and other jam band recordings (and who can't get
behind the thrill of a 35-minute pop gem?)  In that community, trades
involving source material with an MP3 generation are considered gauche; you
just don't do it

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stewart Mason" <flamingo@theworld.com>
> Number one: seriously, am I the *only* person here who has experienced a
> massive catastrophic hard drive loss?  Trusting a music collection that
has
> undoubtedly cost me many thousands of dollars to the whims and vagaries of
> a small hunk of metal does not strike me as a good idea.
>
> Number two: I just can't be sure that what I think is "the best of the
> best" on July 8, 2003, is what I'm going to think is "the best of the
best"
> on July 8, 2013.  The number of times I have either belatedly discovered a
> brilliant song on an album I had previously overlooked or heard something
> new by a band that made me re-evaluate everything else they had ever done
> is already huge; I shudder to think how many albums I'd have to re-buy in
> the ensuing years if I tried to do something like this.